This invention relates to bakery product slicers and particularly to automatic roll and bread top slicers.
Rolls and breads are made from flour, yeast, water, and various other ingredients. Prior to baking, the ingredients are mixed together forming dough. Within certain temperature ranges, the interaction of yeast and other ingredients causes gas to form. This in turn causes the dough to expand. When the dough is placed in the oven, the outer surface cooks first and the inner portions last. The yeast activity about the surface of the dough stops as a crust forms about the dough, however the yeast activity in the inner core of the dough does not cease until the dough is completely baked. During the period between crust formation and baking completion, gas forms as a result of the yeast activity within the dough. Due to the crust formation about the outer surface of the dough, the gas cannot escape from the dough. As baking progresses, the gas is heated causing expansion pressure within the dough against the dough's outer crust. Without an outlet, the gas eventually expands to a point where it bursts through the dough crust, thereby ruining the roll or bread loaf. To eliminate uncontrolled crust bursting in French and Italian style rolls and breads, it is customary, preliminary to baking, to slit the rolls and breads along the top longitudinal axis while the rolls and breads are still in the dough stage. This not only provides a decorative marking on the roll or bread loaf, but also provides a controlled line through which gas may escape during the baking process. A secondary purpose for slitting prior to baking would be the desire to add to a bread loaf an ingredient such as butter just prior to baking.
Heretofore, slitting the dough just prior to baking has been done manually. Bakers stand at ovens and, while conveyor trays containing pieces of dough are moving toward the ovens, the bakers slit the tops of the dough with hand-held knives. Some major drawbacks to this procedure are the lack of uniformity in the slits, the fatigue caused the bakers, and the expense of having bakers do such tasks.
The prior art includes various patents pertaining to bakery product slicers, but none of the patents, with one exception, are particularly suited for slitting the tops of various sized rolls and bread loaves. U.S. Pat. No. 2,669,269 to A. S. Schmidt discloses a rotary disk slicer for slicing rows and buns. Slicer blades are set at a predetermined elevation with the slicer blades cutting along a horizontal plane. Margin guides determine the depth of the cut in the rolls or buns as they are conveyed past the cutting blades. U.S. Pat. No. 2,987,089 to D. S. Lecroue discloses a roll slicing machine. Slicer knives are set at a predetermined elevation with the slicer knives cutting along a horizontal plane. The position of the rolls is varied independent of the slicer knives to accommodate rolls of different heights. U.S. Pat. No. 3,995,513 to D. L. White discloses a bakery product slicer and method for forming vertical slits along proof lines between adjacent buns in clusters of buns. The vertical slicing blade, set at a predetermined height, is positioned on the nominal proof line to be sliced. Means for shifting the buns sufficiently to move the proof line into alignment with the vertical blade is disclosed. The buns themselves are cut with rotary slicing blades in a horizontal plane.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,730,032 to E. L. Marckx and H. F. Stines discloses an apparatus for splitting the upper surfaces of bakery products preliminary to baking them. The apparatus is mounted directly on the oven, in front of the oven door. It includes a track, a carriage, and a carriage drive for moving the carriage across the bakery products. Mounted on the carriage are cutters, a spray, and a seeder arranged respectively, for splitting, spraying, and seeding the upper surfaces of the bakery products. The spacing between the cutters is predetermined to center them exactly on the loaves of bread or other baker's products immediately below.